


Prodigal Children

by cjmarlowe



Category: Supernatural
Genre: F/M, Sensory Deprivation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-10-14
Updated: 2008-10-14
Packaged: 2017-11-12 10:41:51
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,203
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/490000
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cjmarlowe/pseuds/cjmarlowe
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Like it or not, Dean's got a path set out for him, but it's not a path he has to walk alone.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Prodigal Children

It's six months on when Dean goes back to her, leaving Sam's wounded ass behind in a motel outside Kirkwood and driving half the afternoon. He's been told by both the human and the divine that she's all right, that she's doing just fine, but Dean wants to see for himself anyway. His faith doesn't extend very far beyond those things he can verify as real.

There was some kind of connection forged between them in the earliest days of his return and he's come back now, now and not a month ago or a month from now, because circumstances have conspired to bring things back her way again, and Dean doesn't think that's just chance. There's no longer an expiry date on Dean's life but he still feels like there's a clock ticking in the back of his head, and like everything happens in its time.

He knocks three times, quick and sharp, and has to wait only a moment before he's watching Pamela's fingers brush over the doorframe as she's opening it for him, finding its shape and framing herself in it.

"Dean Winchester," she says before he's announced himself. "I was wondering when I was going to see you again." Her lips twist on the word 'see' and her eyelids are closed, sunken. Dean can still picture the blackened, empty sockets behind, but he doesn't flinch.

"Just don't tell me you smelled me coming," he says as she steps aside to let him past. "It's been a long few days."

"I didn't stop being a psychic, Dean," she says, closing the door carefully, fingers of both hands exploring the lock and securing it. "I just changed my tools."

She makes her quick and careful way into the house and Dean makes note of it all as he follows. He can still remember their first visit, the comfortable clutter around her home, but that's all gone now. Books are on their shelves and candles are in their iron sticks and everything has a place and a purpose.

The front room's clean, rarely used, none of the tools of her trade visible in any of the cabinets and in any of the corners. It's a place where unwelcome visitors are greeted, entertained and sent on their way.

The kitchen, though, the kitchen's lived in, window open and shelves stocked and the whole thing somehow just warmer. One side of the table's clear except for a pair of stained teacups and on the other lives a Ouija board, tomato sauce caked on one corner and wear patterns already visible in the bright paint over slightly raised letters. All at once it's all something familiar again.

She offers him coffee while they're in there but takes nothing for herself, and refuses his offer of help with an indulgent smile.

Then she leads him deeper, past the public spaces, into her home.

He flips a light switch in the dim hallway but the bulb's burnt out - no, burst, tiny fragments of glass still visible embedded high up on the wall - and never replaced.

Turns out all of them are.

There's a glass of red wine, half empty, already sitting next to the chair where she curls up again, bare feet tucked up beneath her. Dean doesn't hesitate to make himself at home nearby, and when he finally sips his coffee he discovers that she Irished it up before handing it over.

Dean can make himself at home just about anywhere, but there are very few places where he actually feels it. Here, though, here there are black and white photographs lining the walls, mismatched cushions decorating the furniture, and a sense of peace - or if not peace then at least acceptance - to all of it.

Pamela threw the drapes open when they first came in and Dean assumes it's for him until he sees how the light falls across her chair, realizes that she may not be able to see the sun but she can feel its warmth.

"So is this business or pleasure?" she says, her ear angled towards him but not her face.

"Well, why don't you tell me?"

"I'd say it's a bit of both," she says, and as she tilts her face at him Dean has the uncomfortable feeling she's sizing him up without the benefit of eyes. But she's smiling, almost grinning, and the feeling settles again. "Let's get the business out of the way first. You didn't bring Sam."

"Sam's busy."

Sam was sleeping the sleep of the dead when Dean left him. He left a note by the bed - where and when, if not why - but figures Sam's not coming after him even if he feels up to leaving the motel. Sam has business of his own these days.

Sam is not invited.

"Mm-hm," she says, before taking a quiet sip of her wine. "He has been, hasn't he?"

"Your pet spirits sharing all our secrets with you?"

"They're not exactly secrets," says Pam. "Your brother's a person of interest to them. So are you."

"A lot of things have changed," he says, and reminds himself they're doing business up front. Dean's never really gotten being a person of interest, even after all this time, not to the downside and not to the upside either. "Do you know what you saw that day?"

"Castiel," she says, each syllable crisp.

"No, I mean, do you know--"

"I know, Dean," she says, calmly, reaching over to lay a hand on his arm as she interrupts him. "I know now."

There are a whole lot of things to know when it comes to Dean's pet angel - or maybe it's the other way around - but at least she knows what he _is_. At least she knows what they're facing.

Dean read parts of the Bible for the first time when he was eleven, part of his mythological education but far less convincing than the Edda or the Mabinogion. Those stories at least had elements of things that were _real_ , weren't just fantasies told by parents to their gullible children. Pastor Jim was a good guy, but Dean never took a lot of what he preached seriously.

It was never supposed to be real too.

"Has he come to you again?"

"To do what?" she says. "Speak to me and take my hearing too?" Dean starts to apologize but she hushes him with a wave of her hand, composes herself again. "I dream of him, Dean. That's when he comes."

Yeah, Dean _wishes_ his visits were all a dream, wishes Castiel didn't take him by the hand and show him things he never wanted to know. But that wouldn't change the bigger conflict, it wouldn't change Dean's _purpose_. It wouldn’t change the fact that they were riding hard and fast to either avert or embrace the apocalypse.

"Last time we were here we asked the wrong questions," he says. "We shouldn’t have been asking who. We should have been asking why."

She's silent but she doesn't change expressions, her fingers don't clutch at Dean's arm, she doesn't fall into the memories of that day when Castiel made her burn.

"How are you not angry?" he blurts out. "How are you--?" Like you are, he wants to ask. How are you like you are? How do you not want to lash out, guns blazing, at the whole world?

"I am angry," she says, and now her fingers do tighten but it's conscious and deliberate. "I'm angry at the world. I'm angry at God. I'm angry at _myself_. But--"

"But what?" says Dean, unwilling, maybe unable, to leave it there.

"But it doesn't do any good to scream it out," she says, "and believe me, I tried. So now I channel it all somewhere else." She finally lets go of his arm, rests her hands on her knees. "You think you're the only one with work to do, Dean Winchester?"

Dean looks into Pam's face and is glad he doesn't have to explain how he can hate God and follow his plan at the same time.

"I think there are a lot of people doing a lot of things," he says. "Some of them matter more than others right now."

Castiel plays his cards too damn close to his chest, gives Dean only what he thinks he needs despite claims of telling him the whole story. He could've just told Dean that he's working with Pam and saved them all this trouble. But Dean's here now and he can see for himself that her work is his work too. She's on his side, and there _are_ sides to be had, even if most people don't know it yet.

Though even Dean doesn't know just where the line is drawn between them, and on which side of it some people fall.

"I do what I can," she says, "and leave the rest in hands more capable than mine."

Dean looks at her hands and wonders if there are really any more capable than those. But she's speaking metaphorically, not literally, and so he just leans back and gives her the slightest of nods.

Business concluded, Dean's interests satisfied, they talk about everything and nothing, taking advantage of a moment with no other demands. Dean might be the champion of talking about nothing that matters but a few meaningful things slip out in spite of him, because as good as Dean is at talking, she's better at listening.

He wonders if that's a recent development.

She knows Milton's _Paradise Lost_ and Dante's _Inferno_ as well as he does, though probably for less pragmatic reasons, and has a guitar sitting in the corner of the room that Dean's itching to get a better look at. When she has her feet up on the table, leaning back so the lengthening shadows fall across her face, she looks the same as the day they met.

It doesn't feel like much time has passed when Dean realizes he's seeing only by the light of the neighbor's distant porch lanterns, but he doesn't ask for more. Pam gets around like she's been blind for a lifetime, not just half a year. She gets him more whiskied coffee, digs up a dusty copy of the _Theatrum Diabolorum_ , picks up that guitar like she knows he's been looking and gives it a gentle strum.

Some of the pictures lining the walls are actually of her, on a little stage in a little bar with someone who may or may not be Jesse, so Dean's no more than a little surprised it's already in tune and clearly well loved.

She runs her hands over it before beginning, diving headfirst into All Along The Watchtower, instantly recognizable. Dean's not someone who sings, not outside the shower and other unguarded moments, but before long he's singing softly anyway, lounging back against the arm of the couch and comfortably warm with whiskey.

When he closes his eyes he can still see her playing, her head tipped forward like she's watching her hands the way he has been all along. Her hair, bound loosely at the nape of her neck, falls free in places and dangles over her cheek. She's more Hendrix than Dylan, and moves on through a half dozen more songs without pausing between.

It's only when she stops that he opens his eyes again, watches her caress the guitar in this silence between songs.

"Never figured you for one to be happy with a quiet evening like this," she says, strumming idly, just for the sound of it.

"Well, like I said," says Dean. "Lot of things have changed." Though he's not sure if this is a change so much as something that's just been unearthed from the clutter of his life.

"You know, there's a lot of pent-up energy over in your direction, Dean," she says, smiling again, "and I don't need to be a psychic to feel it."

"Is there, now?" he says, and doesn't pretend he doesn't know exactly what she's talking about. He chuckles and he's not blushing, hell no, but he's glad she can't see the red flush that creeps up his neck, the one he tries to rub away with one hand.

"You saving it up for something?"

"Just been a little busy," he says. No point lying about it. It's not a point of pride, but it's not a point of shame either. It is what it is. "There are some things that are more important. Didn't need the distraction."

"Ah, like that," she says, her smile changing into something less teasing and more understanding. "Are you forbidden?"

"No," says Dean, shaking his head before remembering she can't see it. "That's one thing at least that no one's ever asked of me, I just... made a choice. I made a choice."

She nods, strums the guitar again. "It's been six months for me, too," she says, neither sad nor apologetic, "but I think that's more a case of not getting out much anymore."

"You've been busy, too," he says, but she shakes her head.

"No one's wining and dining the girl with her eyes burnt out of her head," she says, and waves off the apology that somehow she knew he was about to make. "Not that I would've said yes. We find other things."

"We do," agrees Dean, leaning back as she starts another song, something with a little more edge. He doesn't sing this time, he just lets her play. It's her anger, and the least he can do is let her get it out any way she likes.

"I want to see you again," she says a long time later, into the near-total darkness of the room, and when she raises her hands from her guitar Dean knows what she means.

"Okay," he says, and though he's sure she doesn't need him to he takes her gently by the wrists and raises her hands to the edges of his face, letting go only when he feels them begin to move along his skin. Her fingers immediately find a new scar by his left temple, running down to the shell of his ear, then trace over his eyebrows, his cheekbones, the line of his jaw. Her thumbs rest on his lower lip for a moment before moving on to his throat, his collarbones.

She finds the pair of leather cords around his neck and follows them to their end, one of them a horned amulet and the other a silver cross.

"I never pegged you for a man of God," she says, letting the both of them rest in her open palm.

"Yeah, well, that makes two of us," says Dean. "Just sort of burst in and caught me by surprise."

"It looks good on you," she says, and tucks them both back inside his shirt before continuing on to rest her hands on his shoulders.

"Fits better than I thought it would," he says, reaching up to hold her wrists again. So many years of fighting, of resisting, of living through things he would've called hell until he saw the real thing. If there was a God, a biblical God, he clearly hated Dean Winchester.

He sees the twitch of her eyelids, the tightening of her jaw, and he knows she's thinking those same things about herself. They both know better now, but memories don't go away just because you want them to.

"Dante was wrong," he tells her, looking at her missing eyes. "Tiresias isn't in the eighth circle of hell, and none of this is a punishment. We're working for the same thing."

And they both bear the scars of their chosen path.

"We are what we are," she says, and with that the brief moment of knowing what's inside her head has passed. "And we will be what we will be."

"Sounds like something I'd hear from a dime store psychic," he says, stroking her wrists with his thumbs. "You can do better than that."

"I don't know how this one turns out," she says. "I just know you need to keep fighting, Dean."

Dean doesn't need to be told to keep fighting. Dean's never had to be told to keep fighting. He just has more reason now than ever. He believes in what he sees in front of him, and what he sees these days are angels and demons fighting over the fate of his brother, and the world. That's not faith, that's the family business.

"I know I'm doing the right thing," says Dean, "I just don't know if it's going to work."

"Nobody knows that, Dean," she says. "If _they_ don't even know, I'm sure as hell not going to know. If we all knew, there'd be no battles to fight in the first place."

Dean's tired of fighting, but better to be _able_ to fight than not be able to do anything. This whole things feels bigger than them all, but that doesn't mean he's not still caught right in the middle of it.

"I thought we were finished with business," he says finally, and strokes her wrists again.

"This is business?" she says. "I thought this was just some good old-fashioned philosophical discussion."

"Philosophy _is_ business," he says, and that's never been so true as it is these days.

When she kisses him, Dean doesn't protest. He saw it coming a long way off and feels like it's the right thing at the right moment. The right person at the right time in the right place. Maybe this is part of the reason he felt the pull to come here; maybe this is one of those answers he wants so much.

"You're sure you're not forbidden?" she says, and Dean feels more than sees the smile on her face when she does.

"If God didn't want us to have sex once in a while he wouldn't have made it feel so damn good," says Dean, shades of his old self wrapped up in a shiny new bundle of restraint and good judgment, and she takes him at his word.

His jacket is already hanging somewhere in the dark, his shirt and hers soon lost on a floor that now houses only dim shapes for Dean. When she says "bed" he lets her pull him to his feet and stands there, lost in the middle of the room, the dim starlight not enough to navigate by.

"You'll have to lead me," he says as he gropes for her hand again.

"Isn't that what I've been doing all day?" she says, gripping him tight and leading him safely through the darkness.

Her blinds are drawn, fastened, not even the light of the stars to give Dean a hint what's in store. Her hands are on him, strong fingers mapping each part of him, stripping him down till all there is is skin to skin. And his hands are on her, doing what his eyes can't, finding all the soft and secret places of her.

"You're good with those," she murmurs, her lips closer to his ear than he'd realized. She's kept her breaths soft, light, no rush of heat against his neck to give her away.

"Not as good as you," he says, but he tries to be, does everything he knows is good and a few things he thinks might be. Then he tangles his fingers in her dark hair and feels every strand of it as he follows the path her head takes as she kisses his skin, trails her tongue along it, lowers herself over him and covers his body with hers.

He hadn't remembered it could feel like this, every bit of him begging to touch and be touched. She curls a hand around his bicep, flicks his nipple with her tongue and his hands roam down her back as far as they can go, smooth over the curve of her ass and dip between her thighs.

She's hot, he can feel it against his hands before they even touch her there, hot and damp and fuck, it just makes him harder. His fingertips glide over her, slick and ready, but he doesn't do more, can't, isn't rolled into the right position yet and there are other things to touch first, other parts of her to explore.

She grips his hair and brings her mouth to his and it's like an interlude, a pause for breath to find themselves again. He grips her shoulders and she grips his and they're still, touching only in those places, discovering and rediscovering just each other's mouths before they move on.

Touching her in the dark like this doesn't feel like distraction, it feels like worship.

When they finally stop she takes his wrists, pulls his hands to her face and moves his thumbs to brush over her closed eyelids, soft and empty. She tells him it's all right, and it's the last place Dean was afraid to go.

He rolls them onto their sides, facing one another, and moves his hands from her eyes down her face, pausing at her lips and letting her lick at the tips of his fingers.

Dean leaves damp trails over her chin and throat and she leaves scratches on his back, red lines over his shoulders that Dean's sure he'll be able to see for days. She stops when he gasps and starts again when he begs her to.

He can feel her breathing as his hands cup her breasts, wrists resting against her chest; he can feel her ribcage moving up and out as he touches her, and she touches him, and something touches both of them. He brushes her nipples to hardness with his thumbs, then pushes past that till they're soft and swollen again, till Pam is gasping and squirming, before moving on down her body.

Dean slips his fingers inside her as she curls her hand around his cock, and they move together at once, uncertain at first but finding all the right places in good time. There's nothing left but to breath and stroke and press and rock till they climb as high as they can go.

He knows she comes by her shudder, her gasp, the way she tries to still his hands and then lets them start all over again before she's had a chance to come back down.

Pam touches him like she wants to memorize ever ridge, every wrinkle, every vein of his cock, and it's just this side of too much.

"Jesus, your hands," he says, and comes all over them.

Dean thinks he's learned more about faith and trust right here in this bedroom than he has in the six months that came before.

When he finally sleeps, he sleeps soundly, unplagued by restless dreams that jerk him awake before his body's had a chance to rest. And when he does wake up, the room bright with sunshine through the opened drapes, he hopes she's done the same.

Dean makes breakfast - at his own insistence - and knows it's time to go back to Sam when they're done. Knows Sam is probably sitting in front of the television with a greasy take-out bag, waiting for him.

Dean knows where his place is, and where he wants to be.

"I didn't expect this when I came," he says, sucking his thumb clean. "I want you to know that."

"You think I'd mind if you did?" she says, clearing plates from the table and setting them in the empty sink with ease. "You think I'd mind if you did it again?"

"I don't know when I'll be back," Dean says carefully, but he doesn't think she'll mind. No, he knows she won't; they understand each other. "Might not be for a while."

"You've got things to do," she says, wiping her hands off on her jeans and turning back, facing just to the side of him. "So do I."

"So _will_ I be back?" he says, a little more cheekily.

She moves closer, runs a thumb down his cheek to orient herself then curls her hand around the back of his neck. "You'll be back," she says, "and I don't need to consult the spirits to confirm that one."

"Sam's waiting for me," he says after a few moments of silence. And he wants to get back to that, get back to his brother and the relationship they're rebuilding and the mission they've found themselves on, but he's a little reluctant to let go of this anyway. "Wish I knew how all of this was going to shake out in the end."

"Neither of us can know that, Dean," she says. "There are a lot of ways this can go. We just have to believe in our part in it."

And Dean believes in it all right. He doesn't like it, he still doesn't feel like he fits in this role that's been carved out for him, but he believes in it.

She kisses him one more time, then pats him on the ass and Dean knows it's time to get on the road. He's got a hell of a drive ahead of him, and a hell of a life yet to come after that.


End file.
